From the Eurozone downturn to the mistrust crisis.

"Geopolitics of Europe" offers a dynamic program on both tensions and issues within the European Union, as well as its interactions with the rest of the world.
Through maps, iconography, videos, computer graphics and role playing, the Mooc renders the main geopolitical issues appropriate to Europe while focusing on its representations around the world.
Definitely multi-disciplinary, this Mooc offers the learners a real tool box built up through a combination of History, Geopolitics, Economics, Political science, Geography and Law.
Format :
The pedagogical program is both progressive and modular. It is composed of seven thematic blocks. Each block has a different scale and view point. Even though the main issue exploration in each block is thought as free navigation, each block remains marked out by specific steps : a mapping situation scenario, the study of a documentary corpus, a focus on the national perceptions, as well as an emphasis on the news.
Please notice that some very limited content will only be available in French.
The knowledge acquired in the first four blocks can then be assessed through a quiz and put into practice through the final serious game : a European scenario, a mission, and decisions to make...!
Block number seven offers new analysis that will enable you to understand the latest events of the year 2016.

教學方

Sylvain KAHN

Thomas RAINEAU

Philippe PERCHOC

腳本

-The European Union might split one day. Indeed, more and more European citizens are dubious. They raise doubts about what? About whether the construction of Europe, unprecedented in History, is prepared for this protean crisis in which its countries are drowned. You have to understand that the European construction faces an unseen distrust crisis. This unseen distrust crisis is amplified by the convergence of two crises: first, as we just mentioned, the economic and social crisis the European Union is going through since 2008. It is still going on in 2015. It combined with a democratic legitimacy crisis that started in 2005, the year when the European constitution was rejected by the population. Therefore, this double crisis transformed into a distrust crisis. I will talk about this distrust in the first part of this unit by taking a look at the maps that best explain the problem: the remarkably high electoral scores of Europhobic or sovereignist parties. This distrust started because the European Union does not manage to face the major challenges confronted by Europeans. In the second part, I will address the issues Europeans take as internal challenges. As you know, the European Union is affected by unemployment, by the eurozone and its weaknesses, which economies have yet to converge. Finally, and this may be the most worrying point for the public opinion, structural difficulties in financing the welfare States. Then, in the third and last part, I will show you the challenges Europeans perceive as external to their territories, and wish that it would stay that way. The European area remains an ever-growing source of attraction for a great number of men and women, who, trapped in by war oppression and social and economic blockades in their country, migrate to a European Union that hardens its external borders. There are also tensions with Moscow, that is more and more nationalist. Do not forget, Polish and Romanians know it, but us, in France, in Germany, in Spain, we tend to forget that the European Union and Russia share 2.700 kilometers of borders and a lot of Member States have, in the past, been enclosed in Russian and Soviet Empires. And the third external challenge, this uneven war against Jihadist organizations based in the Arab-Muslim world on the frontier with the EU. In the first part, let us see how the European Union faces the challenge of a distrust crisis. Citizens doubt its capacity to take up the great internal and external challenges we will address in the second and third parts. This distrust is tangible, on the one side in the Eurobarometer surveys and, on the other side, in the electoral scores of populist parties. The Eurobarometer Special Surveys estimate the trust level of European Union's citizens. Look at the curve. You can actually see that the trust level declined from 61% in 1979 to only 31% in 2013. Only 28% of people feel represented by the European institutions. Now, let us take a look at this map, which allows us to see that this average, this global number, is uneven. Look closely: trust level in the European Union is best maintained in recent Member States. It may seem surprising. It is also the case in Member States that have not yet adopted the single currency, the euro, but this is certainly less surprising. Now on to the European Parliament. You are aware that less than a year ago, there were elections in the European Parliament, in May 2014. Maybe some of you voted, other may have not, some of you might not be European citizens, nevertheless, you know that the European Parliament is elected for five years. Here, you can see the distribution of MEPs on this pie chart. The distrust is clearly visible. On a total of 751 deputies, 29.55%, slightly less than a third, are Euro-sceptic or/and anti-Euro. They are represented in grey and red on this chart. In the last Parliament, voted in 2009, Euro-sceptics and anti-Euro deputies only represented 20.37%, that is a fifth. To see how these Euro-sceptic and anti-Euro votes are divided, let us look at the map of populism in the European elections, state by state. We can also look at the map of national rights in these elections. An increasing number of states massively vote for parties that have the following characteristics: so-called protest parties, they often have unfavorable opinions about Islam, very unfavorable opinions about migrants and the European construction. We can also notice that the score of these parties varies from an election to the other. Thus, in Finland, the Netherlands and Italy, they dropped between the last legislative elections in their country and European elections in 2014. However, in other countries, the score of these protest parties skyrocketed in Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Denmark and Sweden. We can note that this distrust is evenly expressed in ancient and recent Member States. In countries affected or not by unemployment and the eurozone crisis. This distrust towards EU manifests itself through elections and the lasting inclusion of populist parties in politics. The far-right populist parties, often divided among themselves and in minority, do not govern. However, their influence on governing parties increases. This tendency is perfectly illustrated by Hungary and the United Kingdom. A few far-left parties represented in the European Parliament went from a protest and sovereignist agenda to an agenda maintaining a few populist elements but is, above all, an alternative anti-austerity agenda. This explains why the "Syriza" party is governing Greece since its victory in the January, 25th 2015 legislative elections, placing the leader of the party, Alexis Tsipras, as Head of Government. In Spain, a similar party called "Podemos", "we can", is the current favorite in the legislative elections that will take place in November 2015. These internal challenges, as you know, are economic and social. Since 2009, the European economy stopped increasing. Unemployment rates have never been this high since the Great Depression during the interwar years. States that are burdened with debt have great difficulties supporting their populations. The 28 states of the European Union have a 3.5 million net job loss from 2007 to 2013. Especially the industrial employment has shrunk 6.4 million, a 16% loss. The European Union's employment rate is significantly lower than in the United States and Japan. When in fact, with an annual rate of natural increase of 0.4%, European demographics are not very dynamic. The official rate of European Union's declared unemployed set in at 11% of the active population. In April 2014, the number in absolute terms reached 25.400.000 unemployed in the entire EU. In 2008, it only reached 7%. Young people under 25 are particularly excluded from the labor market. Some regions are more affected than others, which creates new borders, or even divisions. At this stage, implemented public policies have not proved their efficiency -it is an understatement. Euro was sold to citizens in the 90s as an upward global growth and converging means towards economies which had different levels at the time. The global economic crisis revealed that this convergence did not happen, that euro hid the weaknesses and the dept of Europeans is so high that the states did not succeed in picking itself up. The fiscal compact, which is the name given to this new treaty on stability, coordination and governance, TSCG, adopted in 2012 by a vast majority of deputies and governments -to clarify, everyone except Czech Republic and United Kingdom- was created to solve it but does not convince public opinions. It is often regarded as widening the gap between those who govern and those who are governed or even as a guardianship of the states by the European Union, or the implementation of a German Europe because of the decisive urging of Mrs. Merkel governments, Chancellor since 2005, in adopting this treaty. This very damaged economic and social situation is even more worrisome since EU faces very complicated external challenges. In the first two parts of this unit, we saw that European citizens cast doubt on the ability of the European Union in facing extreme social and economic issues. This distrust crisis also feeds on their concerns about three very complicated external challenges: migratory attraction, vicinity with Russia, and Jihadism. Since fifteen years, the European area has increasingly attracted a great number of people trapped in by war, oppression and social economic blockades in their country, migrate in a European Union, that hardens its external borders. Contrary to the United States, Canada, Australia or many other countries, the installation of entry criteria for migrants and the closing of borders to migrants unauthorized to remain on the territory, provokes a lot more guilty conscience in Europe. This guilty conscience is notably built on the number of casualties during migrations to Europe. Did you know that the number of deaths is estimated at 20.000 in 20 years according to the research network Migreurop? In almost every Member State, there is a debate between the advocates of migratory freedom in the name of Human Rights and the right to asylum, and those who think EU should set the migratory flow and is well within its rights when expelling people living without authorization. These unauthorized people, commonly called undocumented, not because they do not own ID cards, but because they do not own the legal documents that allow them to remain in the country in which they immigrated. This second position, does not put forth Human Rights, or ethics, but sovereignity and national interests. This debate is built on the gradual constitution of European and foreign communities, native or descendants of invaded or colonized territories by powers in Europe from the 17th century to the 1970s. Today, researchers argue about the reality of the integration issue of Europeans of foreign origins. Since 1991, Europeans and Americans, together with a few Arab countries, are at war in the Arab-Muslim world against Islamic organizations that try to take the power. These organizations declared war on Westerners on the field and launched terrorist attacks in great metropolises, like New York in 2001, Madrid in 2004, London in 2005, Mumbai in 2008 and Paris in January 2015. Their power of seduction is mainly fed by post-colonial resentment, the huge difference of opinion on women's status and modernity and by the invasion of Iraq by Westerners in 2003. In fifteen years, the European Union grew from a lack of democratic legitimacy to a distrust crisis by way of an unprecedented social and economic crisis since 1945. This distrust is alas the result of the European public opinions' failure in resolving it, but also of Europeans' concerns regarding external challenges like migratory attraction, vicinity with Russia and Jihadism. Elected in May 2014, the European Parliament represents this distrust since a fifth of its deputies are populist or Euro-sceptical, whereas traditional pro-European parties and mainstreams softened their europeist ideas. However, even during these difficult and uncertain times, the influence and weight of Europeans remains and strengthens, especially when they europeanize their actions and policies. We could even say that, in the 21st century, the europeanization of Europeans' public policies is the condition of the power of Europeans in the world.